The Australasian Leadership Institute:

Where New Zealand Leaders Go For Advice

Leadership Is Difficult

Whether you are stepping into leadership for the first time, managing a challenging team, preparing for executive responsibility or trying to create meaningful change across an organisation, there will be moments when experience alone is not enough.

You need somewhere to go for advice.

The Australasian Leadership Institute works with leaders and organisations throughout New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific to help people become more confident, capable and effective leaders.

We provide executive and leadership coaching, leadership development programmes and customised workshops designed around the challenges leaders actually face at work.

Our approach is practical, evidence-based and highly personal.

Because leadership development should do more than give people interesting ideas.

It should change the way they lead.

Leadership Development Designed Around Your Organisation

Every organisation is different.

The people are different. The culture is different. The challenges are different.

That is why we don’t believe leadership development should begin with an off-the-shelf programme.

It should begin with a conversation.

We work with organisations to understand what their leaders are experiencing, what needs to change and what successful leadership needs to look like within their particular environment.

From there, we design leadership development that addresses those challenges directly.

Our workshops can cover areas including:

Leadership fundamentals and transitioning into leadership

Helping new and emerging leaders understand what changes when they become responsible for other people and developing the confidence and skills required to lead effectively.

Emotional intelligence

Helping leaders understand themselves and others more effectively so they can communicate, influence and build stronger working relationships.

Building high-performing teams

Understanding what separates a collection of talented individuals from a genuinely high-performing team and what leaders can do to create the conditions for people to perform at their best.

Leading without authority

Developing the ability to influence people, create alignment and make things happen even when you don’t have formal authority over everyone involved.

Psychological safety

Helping leaders create environments where people feel able to contribute ideas, raise concerns, challenge assumptions and have the conversations necessary for high performance.

Accountability and performance

Giving leaders practical ways to establish expectations, address underperformance and create cultures in which people take greater ownership of their work.

Difficult conversations

Helping leaders approach challenging conversations with greater confidence while maintaining both clarity and respect.

Motivation and coaching

Understanding what genuinely motivates people and how leaders can use coaching conversations to help employees develop.

These are examples rather than a fixed menu.

If there is a leadership challenge within your organisation, we can design development around it.

Leadership Coaching

Sometimes the most valuable leadership development happens one conversation at a time.

Our individual coaching provides leaders with a confidential environment in which they can discuss the challenges they are facing, understand what may be getting in their way and determine what they need to do next.

Coaching can be particularly valuable for people who are:

● transitioning into a new leadership role

● preparing for executive responsibility

● experiencing confidence or self-doubt issues

● dealing with difficult relationships

● leading organisational change

● managing challenging teams

● preparing for important conversations or decisions

● wanting to take their leadership to another level.

The objective is not to tell leaders what to do.

It is to help them understand themselves, their situation and their options well enough to make better decisions.

MBTI Team Development

Great teams are not made up of people who think alike.

They are made up of people who understand how to work effectively with people who think differently.

Our Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) workshops help teams develop a better understanding of their individual preferences and how those differences influence communication, decision-making, conflict and collaboration.

Rather than using personality type as a label, we use MBTI as the beginning of a conversation about how people can work together more effectively.

The result is greater self-awareness, better communication and a stronger understanding of what each person contributes to the team.

Why Work With The Australasian Leadership Institute?

There is no shortage of leadership training.

The more important question is whether that training makes any meaningful difference when people return to work.

Our approach is built around four principles.

Practical

Leadership development needs to survive contact with the real world.

Everything we teach is designed to be applied to the conversations, decisions, relationships and challenges leaders are dealing with every day.

Evidence-based

Our work draws on established research in leadership, psychology, emotional intelligence, motivation, high-performing teams and organisational behaviour.

We translate that research into practical ideas leaders can actually use.

Personal

Leadership is ultimately about people.

We deliberately create programmes that encourage discussion, reflection and application rather than simply delivering information from the front of a room.

Tailored

We don’t believe your organisation should have to adapt itself to fit somebody else’s leadership programme.

Wherever possible, we adapt the leadership development to fit your organisation.

Leadership Experience That Makes a Difference

The Australasian Leadership Institute is led by Chief Leadership Coach Mark Wager, who brings more than three decades of leadership experience to his work with leaders and organisations.

Mark has worked with leaders from a wide range of sectors and organisations, including government, healthcare, professional services, retail, charities, education and international organisations.

His work has included organisations such as the New Zealand Defence Force, Ministry of Justice, Department of Internal Affairs, ACC, Fisher & Paykel, St John, Red Cross, Barnardos, Weta Workshop, UNICEF and Amnesty International.

He has also worked extensively throughout the Pacific and regularly writes and speaks about leadership, mindset and high performance.

This combination of practical leadership experience and an understanding of the psychology behind human performance shapes the Institute’s approach.

We don’t simply explore what effective leaders do.

We help people understand why it works and how they can apply it themselves.

Leadership Development Should Create Change

A successful workshop isn’t one where everybody enjoyed themselves and went home with a workbook.

It’s one where something is different afterwards.

A conversation happens that previously would have been avoided.

A manager delegates instead of doing everything themselves.

A team becomes more comfortable challenging each other.

Someone understands why their leadership style isn’t working with a particular employee.

A new leader becomes confident enough to start leading rather than simply managing tasks.

Those small behavioural changes eventually create larger organisational changes.

That is what leadership development should be designed to achieve.

Let’s Talk About Your Leaders

You don’t need to know exactly what programme you need before contacting us.

You simply need to know what you would like to be different.

Tell us about your organisation, the leaders you are developing and the challenges you are currently facing.

We can then discuss what kind of leadership development would be most useful — whether that is an individual workshop, an ongoing leadership programme, MBTI team development or individual executive coaching.

The conversation costs nothing.

And sometimes the most useful first step in solving a leadership problem is simply talking it through with someone who understands leadership.

The Australasian Leadership Institute

Where Leaders Go For Advice